News, images and video of my native county

Posts Tagged ‘Wool’

A story goes that the twelve bells of Bindon Abbey were stolen by night, and are now in the churches of Wool, Combe, and Fordington. Tradition has it that 5 of Fordingtons 8 bells were obtained that night.

Creech Grange is an elegant country house, south of Wareham at the foot of the Purbeck Hills, built by Sir Oliver Lawrence, who acquired the land from the former Bindon Abbey, near Wool, after Henry VIII had abolished the monasteries in 1539. Only fragments remain of the original house built by Lawrence before his death in 1559, partly because it was damaged by fire by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, and finally because in 1846 the entire front was taken down and rebuilt in the local Tudor style.

Woolbridge Manor, a fine 17th century gabled Manor House at Wool. It is to this manor house, as Wellbridge House, that Thomas Hardy brought Tess to spend her tragic honeymoon in his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Monkey World is a 65-acre ape and monkey sanctuary and zoo near Wool. Set up in 1987 by the late Jim Cronin, and later operated by both him and his wife Alison, it was originally intended to provide a home for abused chimpanzees used by Spanish beach photographers, but is now home to many different species of primates.

WITH their roots in the South Dorset Ridgeway and inspired by the rich sources of locally collected folk songs and West Gallery carols, The Ridgeway Singers and Band led by Tim Laycock and Phil Humphries have once again tuned their fiddles and voices to present a joyous celebration of Christmas past and present this winter.